Jail Bait

While the push to build new prisons to accommodate the inmate population boom is well underway, jails have remained overlooked. Most are old, dilapidated, and incapable of handling the large and disparate populations that pass through their gates. Pretrial detainees, those awaiting bail hearings, convicted misdemeanants, convicted felons on their way to prison, and people being detained for the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) are held in jails. The facilities also serve as drunk tanks, shelters for the mentally ill, and places to toss minors for a night to scare them when they've misbehaved. Jails suffer from inadequate funding and experience little reform. They are consistently neglected by scholars, the public, and policy makers.

Administrators expand the capacities of their jails in a variety of creative — or, depending on the viewpoint, absurd — ways. Old schools or other government structures are converted to makeshift jails and called annexes or satellites. In Denton, Texas, a vacant gas station across the street from the local jail is converted into a detention facility. In New York City, floating jails are created on barges moored in the Hudson and East rivers. Two of these boats are purchased from England, after being used as troop barracks by the British navy during the 1982 Falkland Islands war. Two others once served as Staten Island ferries. The deteriorating conditions and continued overcrowding of this period spark a jail reform movement that focuses on architecture and internal design, giving rise to what becomes known as the new-generation jail.

Booking area where inmates not convicted are brought in and classified, Phoenix, Arizona. Maricopa County Jail. Alon Reinenger, 1998